Clearly the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, hates the shit out of bikes because the paper spared no expense in launching this latest offensive. First, they bought the ET costume from the Stephen Spielberg classic film, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." Then, they hired a mortuary cosmetic artist to make it up like Jackie Onassis. Finally, they engaged the Jim Henson Company to create the illusion of human movement and speech. Incredibly, in only a matter of days, this creative dream team managed to take the project from computer renderings:

To finished product:

Now that's movie magic.

But of course, even the best special effects are hollow and lifeless without a brilliant script to give them life, and so the Journal hired Bruce Vilanch to make hilarious phrases like these come out of her word hole:

--"I represent the majority of citizens."
Yeah, right. You don't even represent the majority of nonagenarians who sublimate their fear of death into obscene shopping sprees at Bergdorf.

--"We now look at a city whose best neighborhoods are absolutely, you know, begrimed, is the word, by these blazing blue Citi Bank bikes."
Over the past 50 years New York City has been "begrimed" by blackouts, near bankruptcy, the crack epidemic, terrorist attacks, and most recently a Giant Fucking Hurricane--all of which seem to have gone unnoticed by Mme. Rabinowitz, who must have been spending the past half-century shopping, not tipping her doorman, and subsisting on scoops of cottage cheese served in leaves of iceberg lettuce. For some reason though the bikes fill her with terror, because, you know, she's "sentient:"

--"Before this, every citizen knew, who was in any way sentient, that the most important danger in the city is not the yellow cabs, it's the cyclists who veer in and out of the sidewalk..."
I think she means "senile," not "sentient."

But where are the warnings?!?

--"If you get into a taxi now you'll see in your face you'll see signs saying 'Be very careful...if you open the door you could hit a bicyclist.' Where is the parallel warning to people saying, 'If you are a cyclist you are required to...the rules of the road are yours."

Hey, Dorothy, it's EXACTLY RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING HANDLEBARS:

This is what happens when you've been dying your hair for 60 years and the chemicals start leaching into your brain.

By the way, a tip of the wig to the Jernel for finding an interviewer who's equally if not more stupid:

My favorite was when she said this, which could be the dumbest thing ever said by a newspaper person ever:

--"It's not just shocking, it's also a fire hazard in some cases because the fire trucks can't get into subway stations...because you've got Citi Bank racks."

Does the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal not know that this stuff will be on the Internet forever? It's not like back when Dorothy Rabinowitz was only 70 and if you wanted to look at old newspapers you had to go through the trouble of visiting the library and fucking around with microfiche. No, this is a permanent and easily-accessible record of how completely out-of-touch and batshit insane your editorial staff was in 2013. I'd say that in a few years this paper is going to be a laughingstock, but the fact is that thanks to this video they're a laughingstock now. The only sense I can make of it is that the Jernel is fed up with competing with the New York Times and has instead decided to compete with The Onion:

Speaking of the New York Times, they deserve a lot of credit for posting this on the same day:

I wasn't even sure what he was talking about half the time but bike share makes him deliriously happy and I love it. Sure, I'd have preferred a video of him kicking Dorothy Rabinowitz square in the shin, but this will have to do.

In any case, to celebrate the bike-related inanity that News Corporation has been spewing forth from the Post and the Jernel, please save the date of this Friday, June 7th:

I'm thinking what I might do is just hang around the general vicinity News Corp. headquarters on the 6th Ave. and give away free books. (My books, unfortunately for you.) I'll keep you posted and let you know if I follow through, but if I do you should grab a Citi Bike and roll on by.

Keep in mind though that I reserve the right to scrap the whole thing and just do this instead, which is what I was doing this past weekend:

If I've done one right thing in my life it's moving to a neighborhood from which I can ride to decent trails, and if I've done two right things it's that and getting myself an Engin:

Every so often people will ask me what my favorite bike is and I'll kind of hedge, but over the weekend I had to admit to myself that it's this one. (Not counting my sentimental favorite which I no longer have anyway. Plus, this is its direct evolutionary descendent since both are one-geared bikes with knobby tires designed entirely for having fun.) Also, at no point during my ride did I engage in Strava doping, as forwarded to me by a reader:

But that's only because I don't use Strava. If I did you can be sure I'd use this. That's because Strava is essentially "foffing off" anyway, and it's technically impossible to cheat at masturbation. Saying you shouldn't enhance your Strava performance is like saying you shouldn't use pornography to enhance your onanism--or like you shouldn't use deviled eggs to attract a mate:

You complimented my deviled eggs - w4m - 33 (Grand Army Plaza)You had long hair pulled up. You were riding a bike through the Grand Army Plaza intersection. I was holding a dish of deviled eggs and you said: Deviled eggs! Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. You're cute and you appreciate deviled eggs, which I like. Contact me.

Maybe Dorothy Rabinowitz is right. Between the bikes and the deviled eggs, this city is going to hell in a Citi Bike basket.

Snobby is Dorothy Rabinowitz one of the women you were mentioning last week? She stops her Lexus in the middle of the street to chat with a friend, traffic backed up for miles, oblivious,while her bony heavily jeweled hand is hanging out her window gesturing.

So Snob, if you do come to across the street from where I work, I'll treat you to a nice ice coffee from S-bux or Pret Manger.

And Dorothy might also be interested to know that Citibike is planning to do some more begriming by installing a 61 dock station right in front of my work building which is right across 47th st. from hers.

When I saw the Citi bike photo, I thought to myself- is Snob turning into some kind of bike advocate, or something? But no, he's still the same grumpy opinionated bike blogger that brings me back everyday over lunch. It's worth every penny.

By the way, is it just me? Or does Dorothy Rabinowitz perhaps just need a few of Babble's props?

I would have expected someone called Rabinowitz to be a tad more circumspect about bandying a word like totalitarian. But that's bike haters for ya, ask 'em even to think about bicycles or cyclists and within seconds you're confronted by a spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed volcano of delusions and hallucinations that is impervious to reason, data, decency, and just about anything else that's good. And if she represents the majority of New Yorkers, how come she isn't mayor already?

Well, we’ve got people threatening suicide, blaming the Illuminati Bike Lobby, and warning that the seven plagues of Jehovah shall descend in pestilence and licentiousness through the bike-share program. And still the angry mobs have not yet marched and torn the hated stations to pieces with their bare hands. What gives? I guess we’ll have to bring out the big guns: Hitler invented the whole bike-sharing thing to subjugate and demoralize the Poles, and Stalin’s favorite hobby was riding his fixie (with tires at psi 140) over the throats of supine Chechen peasants. That ought to do it. If not, I’ll call up my pals at the Elders of Zion… wait a minute, I think Dorothy is one of them.

I wish that the bike lobby was an all-powerful enterprise. However, the fact that cyclists are regularly killed and maimed by motorists and the authorities all over the country pretty much don't do shit as a matter of policy sort of belies any statements about the all-powerful bike lobby.

Blue bikes invading the city like a bunch of goddam corporate sponsored stormtroopers! There here to KILL US! Fight back NOW because there may be no tomorrow!!!

Wow, I'm glad that our sweet little twin cities have been able to peacefully deploy a bikeshare program, and now in its second year metro-wide, has not resulted in mass killings. Granted we lack the contingent of ignorant super wealthy and self-important blowhards you got. In this case, thank whoever or whatever you bow to.

No but actually I didn't even watch it. What, I'm gonna read all these words and look at all these pitchaz, AND go watch VID-JOES too?

But even so, I still know where this [whatever it is] is coming from. Pretend you're a rich douchebag.1) Society as you know it is going to shit all around you.2) You work hard to avoid acknowledging this.3) Other people around you keep adapting sensibly to the new conditions and inadvertenly reminding you of said conditions.4) This reminds you that your head is up your ass. DOES NOT COMPUTE.5) Therefore attack those people.

I asked a mechanic friend how to switch stems on the Kludgemaster but he just started saying something about star-spangled nuts. I was like "Oh hell yeah I'm as patriotic as anybody but how do I change that stem?" What an idiot.

How churlish of you to criticize Ms. R. merely for being unaware of the rules of the road caution on CitiBike handlebars. I am confident she will dispatch Brabinger, her driver, to examine some handlebars forthwith, and to report back to her with dispatch.

If the best the anti-bike zealots can trot out is this Park Avenue nonagenarian even more clueless than most others in her hermetically sealed cohort--"I represent the majority of citizens!" (of the 10021 zip code)--then Bloomberg and the bikers have won.

A cyclist was hit and killed in Chicago last week. I wanted to post a link to one of the stories but they all just made me sad and angry. At least they arrested the driver and charged him. By all accounts the cyclist was a decent, well liked guy.

How can the single low gear that's good for going up steep trails also be the right gear for riding the flat miles between home and the trail? Why would that bike not be better with more than one gear?

what a bunch closed minded ass clowns. now we know why nyc aint amsterdam(cause that would be bad; hell i want to be stressed out while commuting i'm a new yorker it'sour right as americans.) here's an idea chase bank suv share let's turn nyc into the real america.also that way the subway entrances will be bigger and might even accommodate fire truck and tanks as god the wsj and murdoch know to be right. having said that this is not mutually exclusive to the point of the autocracy they mentioned. maybe the new mayor will cup our balls while feeding us 64oz sugary cold beverages

Good news! Just set a new PR for blood pressure after watching that WSJ video. There's just so much wrong there, I don't even know where to begin. Blazing inaccuracies? Excessive hyperbole? Elitist mentality?!

Wow, that WSJ editorial is one of the more inane and insulting things I have seen in a long time. They start the whole thing by the interviewer cheerfully saying "guess what a biker was hit by an SUV this week, but correlation is not necessarily causation" what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I have a searing hate for these two shrews. They seem to be neck in neck for the Biggest Cunt in the World Award. I will definitely swing by on Friday if you opt to stage a bike in at news corp.

100th podium? Rabinowitz? Who? All powerful bike lobby? What? And the next trumpet soundeth, the seal was broken from the book, and almighty Lob sent the plague of blue citi bikes to infesteth Mme Rabinowitzs' scranus.

I guess if you ignore the major overhaul of the Brooklyn Bridge, replacement of the Willis Ave Bridge, 23 new pedestrian plazas, expanded bus service and lanes, hundreds of traffic calming projects, and a new asphalt plant you might have a point. And I guess if you overlook the fact that the pedestrian plaza in Times Square has made local businesses more profitable by increasing foot traffic, shortened the time it takes to get through Times Square by car because there are less pedestrians walking in the roadway and decreased auto on pedestrian accidents, you might have a point.

And shucks, if you you think that the DOT's job is only to preserve that portion of Robert Moses' vision that bulldozed neighborhoods for highways, you might have a point.

If it makes you feel any better, my dog says you must have a point because you're an obvious pinhead.

Lighten up, it's just a bunch of bikes. Ain't no one telling you you have to use 'em.

Perversely, this cheers me up! I live in Melbourne, Australia where we have a similar scheme. The complaints here were mainly about how it wouldn't pay off because helmets are compulsory and hence no-one would use the bikes ... but at no stage have there been comments as idiotic as those made by that ghastly woman in the video.

Clearly Rabinowitz (who IS she?!) is a bit of a nutter, but is Murdoch really a bike hater? ('Clearly the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, hates the shit out of bikes...')

In the interests of balance (and I'm no huge fan of Murdoch), in the UK, the part-Murdoch-owned Sky TV sponsors British Cycling, the Sky Pro-cycling Team and free bike rides all over the country. Hardly bike-hating activity.

Isn't it just that the WSJ's readers are all old, rich and car-loving?

There's a great documentary about Bill Cunningham called "Bill Cunningham New York", well worth watching, he seems like a great guy. There's also a great documentary about the WSJ-Fox babe called "Deep Throat", has it's pleasures too.

WCRC, I rode the south and north county trails the other day--only as far as Croton Res, I'll have to do the final sections to Brewster another time. That's a pleasant trip. The only thing I'd wish for is to rip up the asphalt, which I guess is economical and easy to maintain, and substitute a gravelly surface like is used for some of the paths in parks. I don't know what it's called.

My daughter used to work for the company that puts on Fashion Week. Bill Cunningham used to contact her to set up getting a photo of various models/designers. He always thanked her afterwards. Classy guy.

Maybe the Pulitzer people could revoke Rabinowitz's Pulitzer and give it to Cunningham. Yeah, that's right she has a Pulitzer! Rock Machine and Cunningham should split the Pulitzer for Commentary for covering NYC's bike share program.

Awesome CGI Snobbo. Next can you do one of Dotty the Engrimed Terrestrial flying through the sky in the basket of a Citi Bike backlit by a full moon. I'm not sure how it makes sense, but please can you just do it.

On a disappointing note however, likening Dotty the Exhumed Testicle's appearance on the WSJ Comedy Hour to retardation, be it nuclear or conventional, is your most offensive example of tard-baiting to date.

It just occurred to me, Cunningham is probably very familiar with Rabinowitz because he also photographs society events. But what I got from the movie is, he's in it because he loves clothes. He doesn't much like the society people at all, for reasons that also are explained in the film.

Leroy 8:47: I got something similar from a co-worker the other day. I'd like to say it can be dismissed, as she is certifiable (she is), but in NYC it seems like 90% of public policy is made by people who seem certifiable. "All this stuff is being done for the drivers and the bicycles but you know who isn't getting anything? The walkers! The pedestrians, like me!" I said something about the new pedestrian plazas, the extensions of the sidewalks, the High Line... "Not by me, not where I live! I don't see any of dat!" (She lives in midtown.) She never shuts up and she'll probably be the next mayor.

Bloomberg looking out for the true snobs of the city by putting these bikes in; the people who actually use these citi bikes, the author of this stupid article, and every idiot who is favor of these turds on wheels. Bloomberg and the young, entitled beatnik outsiders ruined this city.

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!